


Lest we forget

by MurielJones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death, Destiel - Freeform, Established Relationship, Human Castiel, Hurt Sam, M/M, Permanent Injury, demnentia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 20:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MurielJones/pseuds/MurielJones
Summary: Set somewhere after the s12 finale happened differently and Dean and Cas are married--and Cas is an accountant.  Dean still hunts, while Sam helps out from home.  And things go to hell in a hand basket...Sam develops dementia. A story about how families cope in crisis.





	

What am I meant to tell the doctor, _‘When did it start?’_ How in the hell am I supposed to know, how would I know, I’ve watched him his whole life, nearly his whole life, except a few years in Stanford, and a year in hell, over a year of hell, four months for me, and over a year for him --  and one-hundred and eighty years in hell, that could be enough to make a guy loose it;  except this isn’t that.  I’m scrabbling for a date, something different:

  _"Can you pass me the…” Sam looks perplexed as he holds out a hand to me awaiting a … thing._

_“The..?”_

_Sam is taking his fucking time answering, and we actually don’t have all day. The   hybrid-wolf only show up for eclipses, and this is near is tonight, so Sam had better get it together._

_“The?”  Sam shakes his head, perplexed, still holding out a hand._

_“Dammit Sammy, use your words.”_

I wish I hadn’t snapped at him about that, all the time, about words, about ‘use your words’, about ‘use the real word’, about ‘try the word that means the right thing, Sam.’ I don’t know if I should want to take them all back, I do, but at least we could both think things were still normal, that Sam was still normal, at least I thought that Sam was still normal.

_“The silver bullets?”  that’s Cas  and neither Sam nor I can be sure if he is joking.  Right now the answer is yes, silver bullet would be nice to have.  Cas just slips in beside Sam and helps out with the packing, and I’m getting sure I’ve seen this before, Cas helping Sam out with things, just things._

I thought I was taking this too far.  That was then, this is now.  A whole fucking year later – and clearly its worse instead of better, because when do things ever get better?  Except Cas, being with Cas is better.  Far better.

How could I have thought I was taking this too far?

I couldn’t tell if Cas did that on purpose, or if its become natural for him, part of humanness, covering for Sam, which turns out to be been more than a year, more than a year, more than two years, first a year when I didn’t notice, and Cas wasn’t sure if that was just how it was to be human, and then a year when I didn’t believe it and Cas and Sam kept it to themselves.  I could kill Cas, not really kill him, just remind him of his mortality. Sam doesn’t need killing, this thing is going to do that for him.

 So, to answer the doctor’s question: nope, I didn’t notice it then, I only noticed it now.  Is that what I tell the doctor, all trussed up in my suit and pretending to be a retired FBI officer?  My brother has been so unstable for years that I didn’t actually notice until today that he lost his mind?

_“Sam?”  pause, “Sam?”  a little frantic, another pause, “Lamb’s blood?”_

_He forgot it.  Dammit Sammy.  What do you know -  he forgot it._

_Fuck._

_“Sam?  Sam run!”_

_How in the hell does he even manage to forget this shit?  He’s hit his head a few times, Dad probably dropped him on his head when he was a baby -  that would explain a more than a few things – we’ve both smashed our skills a couple of times, but this, today, it felt different._

_“Sam, what, the, fuck?”  We are safely back in the hotel room, the djinn is still out there, and Sam needs to explain himself, because WTF?_

_“I forgot…”_

_“Forgot?  How the hell do you forget something we talked about this morning, how the hell do you forget something…”_

I was yelling at Sam when maybe I shouldn’t have been, maybe I should have found a way to be fuzzy and sensitive; that’s not what happened, what happened today is that I yelled at him..

_“How the hell do you forget…”  Sam stands lower lip slightly pulled in, brows too furrowed, unresponsive, as though he can’t remember what my most recent question is.  I don’t say the rest of the sentence; it’s not worth it to ask: “the thing that will kill the monster?  The thing that stands between us and Death?”_

What I yelled instead:  “How Sam, just how do you forget something you’ve known your whole life?”  Which is why we are sitting here now, to find out how Sam forgets things he’s known he’s while life, while Sam is tied to some bed, drugged up, restrained, usual works for outsize lunatics; Cas and I trying to find out how you forget something you’ve known your whole life by talking to a doctor that doesn’t known Sam from Adam.

_Sam walks over to the window, arms folded, “You know I forget things we talk about at night.”_

_“We talked about it this morning, Sam.  This. Fucking. Morning.”_

_“No we didn’t.”_

_This isn’t fucking right.  I’m too done to talk to him, and we need to get home before this thing finds us and kills;  I’m throwing things into our duffels because it takes Sam forever to get packed for anything recently...without Cas.  It’s time to get Sam home before he gets us killed._

I knew something was wrong, I don’t know when it happened, and I don’t know how, and now it has a list of names:  concussion syndrome, PTSD - Sam would have a right to both of those?  Frontal lobe dementia?  Vascular Dementia?  Alzheimers, early onset?  Can that even happen in your thirties?  Dammit.  Because the doctor won’t say it to me, but I know, know from watching tv, though tv is Cas’ thing, so I know he knows, Sam could have been helped, could have had some better months at least, if we had been able to get him help, medication, sooner.  I just didn’t realize how bad it was.

  _“Sammy, I think you had better sit the rest of this one out.  You kinda missed a few things there.” Which is a reasonable – given that Sam just nearly got us both killed – thing to say, but, according to Sam it’s not._

‘The violence is a symptom, its not the person you know,’ the nurse says as he escorts us into the doctors office.  In our family violence _is_ the person you know, and no, none of us feel safe at home right now nurse, thank you for asking.  I smile at him, “Yep, just peachy at home.”

 Cas, I love him, says to the nurse:  “Does anyone?” 

 I wish Dean wouldn’t kick my shins—although it does prove my point.  And while I do have a strange sense of humor, that wasn’t a joke.  Not even in Enochian.

  _I am packing to leave again, lamb’s blood in hand, called a favor in to meet a hunter out that way;   then I tell Sammy to that I think its better if he stay home._

_Sam looses it, completely:  yelling I still control him -  nothing new there;  yelling that choosing to hunt without him means I am  hiding things, and if I’m hiding things he can’t trust me – here I had though we were over that;  apparently he thinks  pushing him out of our family now that I have Cas – and Cas loves Sam like a little brother._

_“And, fuck you Sam. You get so say anything you want about me, but this isn’t about Cas, this is about you, not even about me, and you leave Cas out of it.”_

“Sam threw a punch and I ran,” since that doctor wants to know what happened, that covers it.  I ran like a coward, according to the doctor, made things better.  ‘De-escalated’ his word, would have been Sam’s word, not mine.  I got one fucking thing right. “I got back Sam was cowering in a corner, and wouldn’t talk, he was terrified” that’s what the doctor needs to know.  What I didn’t know was if Sam had a gun; which was good, because if I knew he didn’t I would just have had it out, hand to hand, with him.  “Two hours later I had Sam talked down and in the shower, the running water used to calm him down.”  How long had we been finding ways to calm Sam down?  He took his anxiety pills.  He meditated.  He did things right.  He seemed fine in the morning.

  _“Overreacted?”  There is more than a hint of question in Cas’ voice, as he drives back to the bunker from his jo,, nice that Chuck had seen fit to give him a good college degree in accounting (Chuck said it went well with his trench coat.) to go with his permanent (however permanent people are) humanity.  But he had said yes to that deal.  “How overreacted?”_

_“Very.”  I pause and check that Sam is still in the shower—in fact I will probably need to remind Sam to get out--but this works for right now, “As in threatened to kill  me overreacted.  As in threw a punch, a few, and then cowered, in a corner, as though I was Lucifer himself, as in took forever to talk him down overreacted.  And he might have locked the bathroom door.”_

_I know that Cas intends to say ‘oh.’ I know that.  I know what Cas’ thinking, puzzled, overwhelmed by not just his own humanness, by Sam’s obvious vulnerability face looks like.  That’s what Cas looks like now, that an his intense ‘I am driving now’ look.  How many times have I seen that look on his face?  The one that says Sam is vulnerable and Cas will protect him?  Cas is quiet long enough that I know his reply is going to be more than ‘oh’.  What  he does know is this is more than an ‘oh?’  because if Cas knew something wasn’t quite right and  he hadn’t told me?_

_I can’t say ‘Dean, you only noticed this now?  That Sam is angry?  Confused? Forgets everything?  And Anxious?’  because I didn’t tell Dean because he still carries the world on  his shoulders, and I could carry Sam—I should have been able to take care of this._

Sam could be volatile, but given what had happened to him and that he never really had a chance to rest, give that he never felt safe even in the bunker, given that he had been through so much hell, that he had Lucifer in his head, that Lucifer was fresh in this thoughts again, maybe just stress—temporary.  Or not.  So Sam forgot a few things.  It was just that all that data was hard to organize, and I needed something to do anyhow, so what was helping Sam to categorize that Data other than a way to learn things—except that I had a job in town, a good job, a job that brought in money, because the Men of Letters might have resources, and they were intended to last, years—not just the three of us.  I had a really good job, so good that I could keep things running if I worked thirty hours a week, and I could still be home with Dean (and Sam) and help (Sam) with things.  It had been working well.  Make breakfast with Sam, it was a good time for the three of us in the morning, Dean staggering out of bed if he was home, or me calling him if he was away hunting, us all talking about what would happen that day, make a plan together.  Sam writing it down in one his endless note books which’s’ inefficacy remains annoying, but its better with Sam to let go of the small things, no matter how annoying. I would make a sandwich  for Dean to take, then make a sandwich for lunch with Sam, make sure Dean was packed, notes that Sam and I wrote for Dean in his duffel, and Dean leaves for his trip. I take Sam goes to the basement to look things up, he couldn’t get into trouble in there, he didn’t used to get in trouble in there – and I had intended to tell Dean about that - and the days where Sam forgot to read and just rested didn’t matter—we had the research completed before Dean left;  and then I go to work.  Is that what I’m meant to tell Sam’s doctor?

 Dean giving me some advice would help. Dean is tapping fingers on a knee and looking as though he might cry. 

 “When I got home Dean was breaking down the bathroom door, cursing and demanding that I call 911.”  I feel like I said something wrong;  I want to hold Dean’s hand, because sometimes that does make things better - I don’t know if we can do that in this hospital or not.

 Am I meant to tell the doctor that I thought it was all working out well?  Because I had thought it was; me and Cas have real time to ourselves for the first time ever, we’re married, Cas and I are fucking married completely legally, in Chase Country registrar’s office, with Sam as witness. Sam was able to say he couldn’t hunt anymore (that might have been  the only time we had a chance to talk about this, and I blew him off, just clapped on the should and said: ‘Ok man.’). I’m ok hunting alone, just careful with’ jobs I take.  Sam is teaching Cas how to be human (at least I thought that was what was happening). Cas is happy to support our family (in more ways than I knew), he hasn’t even trying to become a hunter (maybe because he was spending so much time pretending Sam was still a supporting partner in my hunts); but I needed a real, physical partner for this one, I thought Sam knew the job, and we both nearly died for it; I thought he knew the job in his blood in his bones, in his anger, and in his fear, Sam knew the job. 

 Sam has never been as confused as he was today day—ever, even with Lucifer riding shotgun.  Sam lost it, completely, when I confronted him about his preparation for the hunt; which was as far as I could tell none, which was unlike him.  I shouldn’t have yelled at him. 

 It’s probably more than stress—one of those post-concussion things—hasn’t a book fallen on Sam’s head recently?  Cas and I are sitting in the psychiatrists office as Sam’s next of kin, they drugged Sam up, cast his hands, both his hands, from hitting the wall in the shower over and over; the doc said not to feel guilty about not being able to stop it, and that it would have been me being beat up if I had got there to fetch him out earlier. Cas and I are sitting here trying to explain to the doctor why we didn’t talk about what was up with Sam until today.

 

 

 


End file.
